The Kinsella Sisters Read Free Page B

part time as a barmaid. But for once she hadn’t been pulling pints–she’d been singing and laughing and dancing into the small hours. She and Finn had swung home around three a.m., and then Skyped Finn’s dad and left a recording of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ on his answering machine in LA.
    ‘Last night was a blast.’ Finn moved across to the pile of debris that Río had fecked into the middle of the floor, and pushed it about a bit with his bare foot. ‘Anything here I might want to keep?’
    ‘Nope.’
    ‘What about the bags in the kitchen?’
    ‘They’re full of crap too.’
    In the kitchen Río had bagged–amongst numerous other useless objects–a torn peg bag, half a dozen broken corkscrews, a copy of a GI diet book (never read), a cracked wine cooler and a yoghurt maker still in its box.
    Upstairs, she had decided to attack her bureau before attempting to cull her wardrobe. She suspected that if she opened the closet door, her clothes would start pleading with her not to discard them–especially those heart-stoppingly beautiful garments she’d earmarked for herself when she’d dealt in vintage clothing. The chiffon tea dresses, the cobwebby scarves, the silk peignoirs–all had their own stories to tell, and all had the power to bring her hurtling back to the past.
    As did the photographs. They were mostly of Finn. Finn aged seven, in a rowing boat with his father, both squinting with identical green eyes against the sun; Finn at thirteen, climbing a mast, black hair a-tangle with wind and sea salt; Finn at fifteen, kitted up in scuba gear, poised to perform a backward roll from a dive boat; Finn on his twentieth birthday, smiling to camera with a pint of Guinness in his hand…
    ‘Ha! Get a load of Dad’s ponytail!’
    ‘What? Show me!’
    ‘I could blackmail him with this if he had any money. Look.’ From out of the bureau Finn handed Río a yellowed newspapercutting. Underneath a headline that read ‘Flawed
Hamlet
Fails to Engage’ was a picture of Shane gazing moodily at a skull. ‘What year was this taken?’
    Río frowned, thinking back. ‘It must have been’ eighty-seven, because I was pregnant with you during the run of that show. I remember climbing ladders to paint the backdrop, and trying desperately to hide my bump–I was scared they’d fire me for health and safety reasons if they found out. No wonder you’ve a head for heights’.
    ‘And depths. I was down at forty metres this morning.’
    ‘Finn! Don’t scare me!’
    ‘Pah! It’s a piece of piss, Ma. I could dive in my sleep now. I got gills.’ Finn started rummaging in the drawer again, and produced a carrier bag stuffed with mementoes. ‘Baby shoes!’ he said, pulling out a pair of teensy bootees. ‘Jeepers! Were my feet ever that small?’
    ‘Give me those!’ Río grabbed the bootees from him, and set them reverently aside in a box she’d labelled ‘Things to Keep’.
    ‘And here’s more newspaper stuff about Dad. Hey! Listen to this. “Shane Byrne glowers sexily as Macheath, but he should not also be required to sing.” Was Dad a really crap actor, Ma?’
    Río laughed. ‘No, he wasn’t. He just never got the breaks he deserved. Good-looking actors can be at a real disadvantage. Casting directors tend to want to bed them rather than hire them.’
    Finn gave her a cautious look. ‘Ahem. Casting directors are mostly women, yeah?’
    ‘Yip.’
    ‘Thank Jaysus for that. You want to keep this?’
    Río shook her head, and Finn screwed the newspaper cutting into a ball and batted it across the room. Next out of the carrier bag was a photograph mounted on pretty, marbled card.
    ‘Well, hello!’ said Finn. ‘Who are these foxy ladeez? Don’t tell me it’s you and Dervla, Ma? Take a look!’
    Río looked–and looking took her straight back to the spring of 1987, the year her mother had died. The picture showed a seventeen-year-old Río walking hand in hand with her sister through the garden of their